Regal Narnia Susan Costume

Hello Coolest Homemade Costumes, my name is Kendall Veronick and I am 15 years old. This year, one of the four costumes I made was Queen Susan from Narnia. These costumes took me a month and a half to complete, I didn’t really do any of the costumes in order; I did some of one, then went on to the other and went back and forth depending on the materials that came in that I was waiting on to move forward. It’s funny because last year when I did my first two real costumes, I told myself, “okay, we need to start a little sooner next year”. Making this costume was very challenging, at times I just wanted to give up, but as I have found I am too determined and stubborn to give up on anything. Eventually, I came up with a solution.

This costume was so frustrating because, I had never done sleeves before, this was only my third costume, so I still wasn’t sure how to do things properly. Anyway, I had gotten one sleeve on right, but the other one didn’t fit correctly, it was so annoying, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it, finally I realized I had just sewed it the wrong way. Furthermore, my poor sister had to endure all my frustrations and tried on the dress a hundred times. Needless to say, she also became very frustrated too. I’m just happy I finally figured it out. I guess it was a good lesson, being self taught, I’ll bet I will never make a mistake again when it comes to sewing sleeves.

The best part of making this costume for me was seeing my sister enjoy it; my sister and I are really picky, so, I was relieved and happy to see that she liked it. Narnia wasn’t as popular a costume at our church’s trunk or treat event because people weren’t familiar with what movie the dress was fashioned after. So once I told them it was from the Narnia films, they really liked the costume. They all especially liked the horn, what we didn’t realize when we bought the horn was that it was ceramic. Despite what you may think, the horn wasn’t hollow it was solid, as a result heavy, very interesting.

HOW-TO

To start, I always like to sketch out the costume, it helps me to think about all that I am going to have to do; kind of like when you take notes, helps me focus. After sketching, I like to plan out each and every step thinking it over a few times just so I can make as little mistakes as possible, unfortunately I’m afraid it’s impossible to not make any mistakes. Perfect the first try, yeah right. Next, I got the fabric and pattern. When making my first costume, I refused to get a pattern because I thought it was downgrading. This isn’t the case, it just saves time, especially for a beginner. I had to make alterations to the pattern and leave out some stuff but overall it made it a lot easier.

Cutting out the fabric comes next, I always get more fabric than I need and cram my patterns onto the fabric to save space; I’m not really sure how I feel about this because I always have extra fabric. I started with the cloak, that only took a couple hours. It was a really simple pattern but I got the wrong size because it was my first time using a pattern. Look at the size! I added the clasp further down the road. I didn’t have a manikin at the time, so I used my sister and fit the dress to her, sewed all the pieces together and then did all the extra pieces such as the white and the tie in the back.

Finally, all the accessories; I made the belt using faux leather (I only glued it), I didn’t use real belt leather because I wanted something more flexible, then I got a hoop from an old belt and sewed that on completing the belt. Then came the crown, now I was doing three other costumes this year and it was my sister’s costume so she did her crown; but I can tell you what we used. We used a hanger wire for the base, adding little pieces to wrap around it. Then we got this little leaf scrap-booking package. She added those to the wire, then painted it; my sister does all the painting for the costumes, she enjoys it. Finally the horn, we bought that online because we figured if we could find it, we didn’t need to work overtime trying to make it.

Hair and Makeup

We pulled up some pictures for the hair and copied it as best as we could and put very little makeup on her giving her a very natural look.